News of families

PAST EVENT: 6-9pm Saturday Sept 6th, Home Hardware in Kitigan Zibi Starts at Home Hardware ends at Nishkadadowin Park near Chateau Logue. Guest Speakers will be saying a few words. Water will be available at start and end of walk. It’s going to be 6yrs that our Girls have missing. We still have no answers, all we have is hope that one day we will have closure. Please come out and show your support for the families and Maisy &...

Friday, June 04, 2010 KAHNAWAKE, QC- Mohawk Peacekeepers have confirmed that the human remains found by a construction worker Monday in a wooded area near the Mercier Bridge are those of Tiffany Morrison. The remains and a skull were found off the service road of Highway 138. Morrison, a 25-year-old Mohawk woman, disappeared in June 2006 after she left a bar in LaSalle and shared a taxi back to Kahnawake with a man from the community. The remains were sent to a crime lab for verification. More to come. Story...

By JOE BELANGER, THE LONDON FREE PRESS A 16-year-old girl whose frozen body was found outside a childcare centre in a native community west of London will be buried Thursday. Meanwhile, police continue to investigate how Sierra Phillips of Oneida First Nation ended up at the centre on Saturday. Sources say she had been at a party Friday night and was dropped off near the child-care centre early Saturday. Her body was found Saturday evening. Investigators were to review security camera videos to help piece together events. Police have declined to release the cause of death, other than to confirm it was not a suicide but a “tragic set of circumstances.” In a death notice in The Free Press, friends were to be received at 2225 Elm Ave. in Oneida Tuesday and Wednesday. A funeral will be held Thursday from the residence starting at 11 a.m. with interment at Longhouse Cemetery in Oneida. The loss comes one week after the death of another young person on an area native reserve. Brendan Deleary, 15, killed himself Feb. 13. Soon after, there were reports he may have taken his life after being bullied repeatedly on school bus rides home to the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation outside...

by Jillian Kestler-D’amours Around the time Tiffany Morrison disappeared, she had started babysitting her older sister Melanie Morrison’s young daughter. “She was coming to the house to help out and hang out. She wanted to be around my daughter because she loved kids,” said Melanie, thinking back. Today, nearly four years after Tiffany went missing, Melanie explained that her daughter still recognizes her aunt in pictures and knows her through the stories told about her. “All of a sudden my daughter will be flipping through the photo album and she’s like, ‘Oh, that’s auntie Tiffany.’ She goes, ‘We’re going to find her, eh? We’re going to bring her home.’ And it just makes you want to cry,” Melanie said, forcing a smile. “Because deep down, I know my daughter is never going to see her again.” Trail running cold Tiffany was last seen leaving the Haraiki Bar in LaSalle, where she had gone to see a band with friends, on June 16, 2006. At the time, the 25-year-old lived on the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve, 20 minutes south west of Montreal, with her mother and young daughter. She reportedly left the bar around midnight in a taxi with a man from the community. After 24 hours had passed with no word from Tiffany, the Morrison family began to worry. “Every time my sister went out, she’d always tell my mother when she was coming home, or where she would be, and if anything changed she’d call to let her daughter know […] and this time, nothing. There was no contact whatsoever,” Melanie said. Ed Stacey, an investigator with the Kahnawake Peacekeepers, was assigned to the case from the very beginning. The main suspect is the man Tiffany left the bar with that night. “[He] has denied police procedures, [like a] polygraph.test,”said Stacey. “He said it wasn’t in [his] beliefs to go through those measures and right now I don’t have enough evidence to get a warrant to make [him] go through the procedures,” Stacey said. The suspect did give a statement to police, saying that he was dropped off first while Tiffany continued on in the cab to her mother’s house. “It’s maybe seven minutes between the two [houses], with the [traffic] lights. It’s not a far distance,” explained Melanie. But since taxi drivers often don’t report the fares going to and from Kahnawake, there is no way to trace which driver or taxi company dropped them off. “If they would have called for a taxi from the bar, then it would have been registered [with the dispatcher]. But that didn’t happen. They waved the cab down off the street,”...

Media Advisory – For Immediate Release Aboriginal Leadership to Hold Press Conference for Slain Family Member Ottawa, ON (October 2, 2009) – On October 4th, over 70 Sisters In Spirit vigils will take place across Canada to honour the lives of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls. Before the National vigil starts in Ottawa, a special press conference will be held by Aboriginal leadership from several organizations calling for an independent investigation into the death of Gladys Tolley. Gladys Tolley was an Algonquin woman from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg near Maniwaki, Québec. She was fatally struck by a Sûreté du Québec patrol car on Highway 105 on October 5th, 2001. After many years searching for answers and on the eighth anniversary of her mother’s death, Bridget Tolley, spokesperson for the victim’s family, will join supporters requesting an independent investigation by the Government of Québec in order to shed some light on the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. When: Sunday, October 4th, 3:30pm EDT Where:University of Ottawa, Desmarais Building 55 Laurier Avenue East Ottawa, ON Gladys Tolley is one of hundreds of Aboriginal women and girls who are missed and still loved by their family and friends. Her memory was the inspiration for the very first Sisters In Spirit vigil in 2006. The vigils have grown from 11 in 2006 to over 70 this year in 2009. Research by the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Sisters In Spirit initiative confirms that 520 Aboriginal women and girls have disappeared or been murdered over the last 30 years. Following the press conference, media are invited to join a community feast, followed by a unity march to Parliament Hill to take part in a candlelight vigil. A Joint Statement supported by a number of organizations calling for a National Plan of Action will be read throughout Canada on October 4th. For more information contact: Joshua Kirkey, Communications Advisor Native Women’s Association of Canada (613) 722-3033 ext. 231, mobile (613) 290-5680...